How to hold your own World Cup Music Tournament

With LTD taking a break from large-scale music tournaments this winter, now is the perfect time to host your own personal tournament, and there’s no better personal music tournament format than the World Cup.

Just as in soccer, 32 songs are evenly distributed across eight divisions, and , every song plays the other song in its division. You can score however you’d like, but to make it more soccer-like I assign one “goal” for every point above a 6, such that a song that would normally score a “9” would get 3 “goals”.

The top two advance per division, one as the high seed, one as the low seed. Then the last sixteen songs are single elimination until the end. This reduces the possibility of flukes . For my December tournament, half the bracket will be former personal tournament champions, and the other half will be my favorite songs of 2011. In the last 12 months I’ve been taken by a number of late 70s/early 80s acts that I hadn’t properly explored before, and that era is strongly represented in the bottom divisions.

December 2011 Legends and Heroes Personal Tourney

Legends of the Past

Division A: Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen); Young Americans (David Bowie), Wild Wild Life (Talking Heads); Miles Davis and the Cool (Gaslight Anthem)

Division B: Intervention (Arcade Fire); The Weight (Band w/ Staples); Real Love (Beatles); Loving Cup (Rolling Stones)

Division C: Tunnels (Arcade Fire); Baba O’Riley (Who), Africa (Toto), Walls (Tom Petty)

Division D: Touch of Gray (Grateful Dead); Roots of Radicals (Rancid); Don’t Stop Believing (Journey); Fool in the Rain (Led Zeppelin)

Heroes of the Present

Division A: Somebody to Love (Live in Montreal) (Queen); So Lonely (Police); Raspberry Beret (Prince); Tide is High (Blondie)

Division B: Oliver’s Army (Elvis Costello); Valerie (Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson); Daytime Dilemma (Ramones); Know Me At All (Monkees)

Division C: ’39 (Queen); Slippery People (Staples Singers); Something Good (Herman’s Hermits); Brandenberg Gate (Lou Reed and Metallica)

Division D: Wavin’ Flag (K’Naan); I Can Change (LCD Soundsystem); Reelin’ in the Years (Steely Dan); Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits)

Enjoy your own personal tournament, and report back to the community!

About Janos Marton

Janos Marton is a lawyer, advocate and writer.

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